


The Names of Your Gods

by whittler_of_words



Series: The Gods That Walk This Earth [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Gen, Trolls are Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whittler_of_words/pseuds/whittler_of_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trolls won their session, leading to them becoming the Gods of the human's universe. Always depicted as children with gray skin and horns, little is known of them outside of each of the twelve Churches. But maybe that's about to change for one John Egbert...</p>
<p>((And by maybe, I mean yes. Based off of <a href="http://nequius.tumblr.com/post/39097401192/if-the-trolls-won-their-game-this-is-how-i-think">this</a> tumblr post.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Names of Your Gods

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This Needs A Title But There Isn't One So](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/33590) by nequius. 



> Warnings for descriptions of violence; nothing bad enough for me to check it as a warning but y'all should know just in case. :)

Your name is John Egbert, and you are going to die.

The rain is like needles on your skin and you’re cold, colder than you’ve ever been before and even more than that you’re _tired_. Your legs are burning and feel worse with every step that your feet collide with the concrete, step PAIN step PAIN step PAIN - your lungs are _screaming_ , you feel like every breath you take is not even half enough and with every second that passes the world becomes more dreamlike, less real. Streetlights blur in your vision and houses are nothing more than streaks of moonlight-washed color as you force yourself to move. To run. There is only one string of thought that exists in your mind, repeating itself ceaselessly, the only thing keeping you going: _Jade Dave Rose Dad Jade Dave Rose Dad Bec Jade Dave Rose Dad they’d miss me I couldn’t do that to them I couldn’t I can’t Jade Dave Rose Dad I have homework due tomorrow I can’t just leave my Bio group there’s no one else in class to take my place who will play the piano when Rose is sad or stay up with Jade when she has trouble sleeping who will Dave go to for help with his music or keep Dad from baking too much or Jade Dave Rose Dad Bec Bro Doctor Lalonde Grandpa Harley I have to keep moving keep moving keep moving for them for them I have to-_

You trip.

You make like Dave and contemplate the irony of your situation. You took a walk later than you should have because you got one of your increasingly common claustrophobic fits, a twitching in your fingers and a tightness in your lungs that even a hard go at the piano couldn’t loosen, because you found that the openness of the sky was the only thing that could make you feel normal again. Cool air, a breeze on your face, the time to drink in the freedom of everything opening up around you. And now one of the last things you’re going to see is the concrete rushing up to meet you, asphalt and grit. The complete opposite of the sky.

Your momentum finally gives out and you roll to a stop. You don’t feel any pain, but you chalk that up to adrenaline. There’s muddy water on your tongue and your glasses are somewhere long behind you and the rain dripping into your eyes isn’t exactly making it easier to see but you don’t get long to contemplate these things. Before you can even summon the thought of getting up again there’s a hard kick to your stomach and then another to your back and you’re preoccupied with the act of trying not to vomit.

“What do you say,” says one of the men, “We teach this little brat to mind his own business?”

“That sounds like a great idea.” There’s the sound of someone spitting, but you can’t tell if it finds its mark or not. Your face is pressed against the asphalt, the same place it’s been since you fell, and you’re forced to lift your head as someone yanks it up by your hair. 

“You better make this entertaining, brat.” And then they start kicking harder.

You try your hardest not to cry out, not to give them the satisfaction, but that doesn’t last very long. As pain explodes through every inch of you, you wonder if the person they were hurting before is okay. You hope they got away. You wonder, distantly, as a kick to your diaphragm leaves you gasping, if you would have kept walking if you’d known what would happen. That they would leave the other person alone and start chasing you instead. You don’t think you would’ve. There are probably a whole bunch of people who would’ve never heard from that person again. You’re glad that won’t happen now.

But there are people waiting for you, too, you remember as one of them kicks dangerously close to your neck, right between your shoulder blades. You can’t leave them. You can’t! You’re filled with a desperate fury, suddenly, out of nowhere. You can’t, you refuse to leave them worried for you all night just to get a call in the morning asking them to identify your body. You won’t put them through that. What can you do, what could you possibly do?

Well. You could always pray.

Not the Maid, you think. Not the Page, the Mage, the Rogue or the Sylph. Not the Seer, or the Prince. Not the Witch. You pray to the rest. You try to call up the official prayers in your mind and find you can’t, so decide to ad lib it instead.

_Heir, give me the STRENGTH to defeat those who wish me harm-_

A kick lands on the back of your head.

_Thief, give me aaaaaaaall the luck so I may win at this game of chance._

You can taste the blood in your mouth.

_Bard, grant me a MiRaClE in my time of need._

The world spins into a slowly fading darkness. 

_Knight, give me protection so I can be there for my family._

You can’t feel the pain anymore.

_PLEASE._

“Hey, shitlickers!” The rhythm of blows stutter and lapse into nothing. You’re too tired to question it, too out of it to hope; you lay there with your face half in a puddle and try to stay awake. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, you bulgechafing nookstains, don’t be looking around! Who else am I going to be talking to, the _lamp_?!” 

“Beat it, kid,” one of the men says, threatening and low. You make an effort to see who they’re talking to and are rewarded with a dark smudge against a backdrop of more smudges. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Like _hell_ it doesn’t,” whoever-it-is snorts, and you want to tell them to run but you can’t. “This became my concern the second that poor asshole started begging for my help.” 

“What the fuck are you-”

“Wait,” one of the other men interrupts. “Look at the symbol on his shirt.” There’s a pause.

“Shit, he’s under the protection of the Knight!”

“Ha!” The new guy starts laughing. You don’t understand why, but you also may have a concussion, so that probably explains it. “You are some dense fuckheads, you know that? Why don’t you irrelevant grubshits fuck off before I _smite you_?” And the men must decide that that’s a good idea, because in the next few seconds the only thing you can hear is the clap-clap of feet as they run away and the sound of rain against cement. There’s a relieved sigh. “Oh, thank fuck. Hey.” The stranger walks closer, his feet splashing in the puddles. From the sound of his voice when he speaks next, he must have knelt down next to you. “You better not be dead or I swear I will scream my fury into the sky until it rains back down as pure fuck-you to this earth.”

“Mmf.” You were trying for “I’m fine”, but eh. Close enough. A pair of hands grip you firmly by your shoulders and begin to haul you up until you’re sitting.

“Easy,” he says as you sway a little. “Wouldn’t want you to pull a muscle.”

“Oh no,” you groan around a split lip. “Gods forbid I pull a muscle.” There’s a second of silence and then the guy bursts into a startled laugh. He doesn’t sound much older than you, actually.

“Can you stand?” He asks, and you consider it.

“I dunno.”

“Let’s try it, then. If you fall, at least you can’t get more fucked up than you already are.”

In the end, he’s more holding you up than you are standing, one arm slung over his shoulders. At least he’s not noticeably shorter than you - that would be so inconvenient. 

“Okay, let’s try walking now and hope you survive the ordeal.” But everything is still so blurry; your vision is horribly shitty and you can barely distinguish your own mud-splattered shoes from the dark ground.

“My glasses-”

“You mean these?” And suddenly there’s a familiar weight being placed over your nose, surprisingly intact. There’s only the tiniest crack in the right lens. It’ll bug the hell out of you later, but for now you’re lucky that there’s even any lens _left_. 

“Thanks…” You turn to your saviour to find that, all in all, he’s actually pretty normal looking. You were right to guess that he was around your age, definitely no older than you. What you previously thought was a grey streak turns out to be the sign for Cancer on the chest of a black sweater. You blink. He must be pretty high in the ranks of the Church of Blood if he has it in such an obvious spot, and he’s so young, too. You haven’t even _pledged_ yourself, yet. You look up at his face to find him glaring at you, and you give him an apologetic smile. He grimaces. Oh, yeah. Bloody mouth. Heh. “Um, thanks for helping me out there. I guess it’s a good thing you came along when you did, huh?”

He stares at you like you just said something incredibly stupid. You shift nervously on your feet, wince when you realize _ow_ that wasn’t such a good idea, and he rolls his eyes. “Just start walking wherever it is you want to go, moron. You’re the one who knows the way, not me.” You look around, fear clenching your gut at the thought that you might have run too far - but no, you recognize this place. You nod to the end of the street and start shuffling in that direction, and the guy starts shuffling with you.

“I’m John,” you say.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hello, Sorry,” you say, trying to sound serious and failing. “I’m Dad.”

“I thought you said your name is John.”

“Dude. It’s a joke. Haven’t you ever heard of dad jokes before?”

He huffs. “Of course I have.” He totally hasn’t. 

“So?” you say after you finally manage to round the corner, and you nod in the next direction. “Are you actually going to tell me your name or not? Or do you really want me to keep calling you ‘sorry’?”

“...Karkat,” he says after a moment, so quiet that if you weren’t using him as a crutch you wouldn’t have heard him. “My name’s Karkat.”

“Hi, Karkat!” Hopefully you can get him to lighten up. He seems so moody. “You should stick around when we get to my house. I hope you like cake. My dad will probably make you like, a bajillion of them.” He just grunts noncommittally, so you take that as a yes. You’re really starting to feel where they hit you now, bone-deep aches that you’re going to be feeling for days. Probably weeks. “We’re almost there,” you say, nodding once more onto the last street. And it’s a good thing, too; you’re really starting to shiver now, as soaked as your jacket is, and it makes every muscle flare into a burst of pain. It kind of sucks. “Are you from around here? I haven’t seen you before.”

“No.” Oh. Okay…

“So where are you from, then?”

“Give me a minute to come up with a good enough lie and I’ll tell you.”

“Okay, okay! If you don’t want to tell me that’s all you have to say.” But you are kind of curious about this guy. Hmm, which topic could you broach that would most likely not offend him? “So. Church of Blood, huh?” He doesn’t immediately start yelling at you, so you take this as a sign to continue. “Are you high up in the ranks?” You ask, nodding down at the bolded sign on his chest. He huffs in something you think resembles amusement.

“You could say that.”

“I’ve been thinking about who I’m going to pledge to,” you muse out loud. “Maybe the Thief or something. She seems pretty cool.”

“Your funeral,” Karkat says. “She’s a crazy shitdick.” 

“Dude!” You splutter. “Don’t say that! What if she hears you?”

“I hope so. Then maybe she’ll actually listen when I tell her to go _die in a fire, you insane bitch_.” He then holds up one hand, middle finger out, and points it towards the sky. He’s forced to stop in his tracks when you start coughing.

“You,” you weeze, “Are going to get yourself killed! If I was actually pledged under her I would sort of be obligated to cut you into teeny, tiny, multiple-of-eight pieces!”

“I’d like to see you try, dumbshit.” And you guess he does have a point. If he decided to let you go right now you’d probably flop over and be unable to move until someone else happened to chance by and felt like helping you up. 

“I’d probably like, die of an aneurism if I tried, anyway,” you say. 

“Why do you say that?”

“Uh?” you say. “Because you said you’re pretty high up in the Church of Blood? And last I checked that means you’re under the Knight’s protection. The last time someone tried to gun down the head of that Church, the assassin ended up shooting himself in the leg. It probably wouldn’t be the greatest idea to mess with you.”

“Yeah,” Karkat chuckles. “That was pretty awesome.”

“How old even are you?” you ask, curious. “You don’t look much older than me.”

“I’m.” He grumbles something under his breath. You decide to be gracious and give him a minute. “Sixteen? I think.”

“You think?” you say, one eyebrow raised. “You mean you’re not sure how old you are?”

“Shut up.”

“Well, we’re _probably_ the same age, then!” you say. 

“Oh, joy,” Karkat deadpans. You laugh.

“Really, though,” you say, a bit more seriously this time. “Thank you for helping me. I would probably be gone if you hadn’t scared those guys away.”

“I know,” he says. You contemplate it all a bit further, and wonder if your prayers had anything to do with it. Nothing happened that would really be constituted as a miracle… But, it certainly was _lucky_ that Karkat stopped by. It could easily be either. 

“Hey Karkat,” you start. “Do you think you happening to be walking by would be considered _lucky_ , or a _miracle_?” 

You try not to pout, offended, when he actually starts laughing at your very serious question. He shakes his head in what appears to be a mixture of both surprise and awe. “You really are a dumbshit,” he says. “You are the densest fucker I have ever had the displeasure of conversing with in all of my sweeps.” Sweeps? Wha? “I congratulate you, John. It takes a special talent to think like you. All of that hard work really paid off.”

“What are you talking about?” you ask. You decide not to be offended. So far it just seems like how he usually talks.

“Miracles?” he goes. “Luck? You think I don’t know what you’re talking about? G- The Bard is a whimsical chucklefuck if I’ve ever seen one. If he heard your prayer he probably thought he was daydreaming and went back to staring into space and whispering _magnets, how do they work?_.” Okay, you do kind of have to agree with him on that one. The Bard is kind of weird. “And trust me, it wasn’t the Thief.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do.”

“But how do you _know_ ,” you ask, and Karkat growls in frustration.

“Just trust me, okay? Vriska was not the one to answer that fucking call!” And then both of you have stopped, you in confusion but him in something else. “Shit,” he says. “Fuck, forget I said that.”

“Vriska?” you repeat. “Who’s that?” You start walking again, more because Karkat’s dragging you than anything else.

“No one. I said forget it.”

“But I heard you, you were talking about the Thief and then you said that name. Is that…” You think for a moment. “Is that the Thief’s name?” Karkat doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t deny it, either. “Holy crap! How do you know the Thief’s name?! That’s supposed to be like, super-secret-y Church of Light stuff!”

Karkat sighs, hard. It’s the sigh of someone who’s about to divulge super-secret Church information. Or at least someone who’s really tired.

“I know all of their names,” he says, and you can feel your jaw slacking. You close it. This is just really surprising. “Vriska is the Thief’s. The Page, Mage, Heir, Bard, and Prince are Tavros, Sollux, Equius, and Eridan. The Maid, Rogue, Sylph, Seer, and Witch are Aradia, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, and Feferi. So yeah. I know their names.”

“Umm.” Mark this on the top of the list of things you weren’t expecting to find out tonight. “Are you sure you should be telling me all this?”

“None of them give a fuck,” he says, and it’s kind of weird because he says it like he knows them. “Well. Maybe Eridan. But he can deal with it.”

Eridan was… The Prince, right? You hope he doesn’t have a problem with it. Oh Gods, _hope_. Okay, think of something else… “What about the Knight, though?” you ask. “You didn’t say his name.”

“I already told you,” he says. 

“No?” You’re pretty sure he didn’t.

“Yes, I did. It’s not my fault if you weren’t paying attention, dickmunch.”

“Can you tell me again, then?”

You stop, because the house you’re in front of is finally yours. The lights are on in the kitchen, and you feel a pang of worry for your dad. You want desperately to get inside, but Karkat is a rock at your side, burning a hole in the sidewalk with his eyes. You nudge him a little with an elbow, and he looks back up at you. 

“You really want to know his name?” he asks. You nod nervously, and he blows out a long breath of air through his nose. “Then listen up, because I’m not saying this again. His name… is Karkat.”

“But.” Isn’t his name Karkat? “Your name is Karkat.”

“Yes, excellent skills of observation there, dunderfuck, truly you are the epitome of your race’s idea of intelligence and wit.”

“But-” You get the feeling you’re missing something really obvious here. Something you’re going to be banging your head on the wall for missing, later. You can feel your mind trying to make the connections but man, they’re not happening. Karkat seems to realize this, because he takes another breath, turns to face you, and says something else.

“Attention, worthless human,” he says. “This is your God speaking.” And you’re confused for a moment, until all of the things he’s said during the time you talked sort of just fall into place with an almost audible _click_ , and you can only think of one thing.

Dad is going to bake so many cakes when he finds out. _So many._

**Author's Note:**

> Yikes. I saw this a while ago but I've never had the motivation to write about it before now! This will stay as a one-shot for now, but the possibility of me doing a series of little one-shots is pretty high up there. I'm already getting some ideas...
> 
> And yeah, John didn't see any horns because they aren't there. In this au the trolls can mask their "trollness" to a degree by sort of using their power to cloak themselves? idk just roll with it yo
> 
> P.s. If you want to talk to me/ask questions about anything, even just say hey - drop me a line at my [tumblr](http://kanayadasgray.tumblr.com/).


End file.
